


Hello From The Outside

by kyluxtrashcompactor



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:19:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6679948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyluxtrashcompactor/pseuds/kyluxtrashcompactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Salvation ficlet inspired by Adele's "Hello" in which years keep Ben and Hux apart, but love brings them back together just in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello From The Outside

_Hello. It’s me._

 

_The years have crawled by with agonizing slowness, time interminable and turning me slowly to stone, like the walls of this cage. I wonder if after all this time, you’ve aged as much as me. I cannot imagine another you, without the universe beneath your feet. When we were both young, and free._

 

_Once there was not such a difference between us, and now there are a million miles. Even having a window is torture, because I look outside and see the stars and imagine that somewhere, orbiting one of these suns, you are moving on with your life. We once had such dreams, you and I, but in the end I did not listen to you when you said you were being torn apart. I let you suffer, and it breaks my heart._

 

_I wonder why you do not write? Perhaps you cannot forgive me for the things I’ve done, now that you have chosen to live in the light. It seems you do not want to hear from me, but I need to say I tried. Every day I wake in here, I feel I’m running out of time._

 

_Perhaps you can tell that I am losing my mind, without you. My thoughts have dwindled to simply loneliness, and an ache that cannot be filled. I would give anything to touch you, to trace my fingers over the scar on your face, to kiss your lips, for you to take me away from this place._

 

_Once again, hello from the other side. I must have written a thousand times. It’s all I have left. The memory of you, the hope that one day you will write. To know that you still think of me._

 

_I’m sorry,_

 

_H._

 

Ben held the letter in his hand as the red numbers on the elevator seemed to drag by, ticking away in an angry glow the reminder of lost years. He had memorized the words on the page, cried at the way the cadence echoed like poetry, full of loneliness and regret. It had only been a few months before that he’d found the box in his mother’s apartment, full of letters addressed to Ren over the years from Hux.

 

They had fought, and the rift that had once lain between them had yawned open again, a great chasm of rage and betrayal that had yet to be sealed. Leia had made an effort to right her wrong, and given Ben the box of letters, which he had read over and over: three years of hope and faith in Ben dwindling to this despair and crushing isolation.

 

All this time, as Hux awaited execution, Leia had forbidden him visitors, including and especially her son. Ben had offered Hux a chance at freedom before his capture, a promise that he would spirit him away where no one would find him, so that what they had between each other could persist while Ben was true to his calling, but Hux refused.

 

He was now enduring a death sentence, dragged on without a set date as torture, no doubt, and it enraged Ben. This was not the world he had left The First Order behind to become a part of: it was no better. That he was to be Hux’s first visitor in three years was irredeemable. But he’d told his mother that there was no other option between she and Ben, no other way to even begin to repair this invasive deception.

 

He stepped out of the elevator and followed the guard down a bland, grey hallway, still holding the letter to his chest. It was worn almost to transparency, softened by his touch, blotted by his tears. Ben followed the guard into a small antechamber off of a tiny room: an interrogation chamber. Another seed of rage sprouted and burst to life in Ben’s chest, as he realized that they had not told Hux he was to have a visitor. Hux sat there, handcuffed to the table, pale with anticipation, on the other side of two-way glass. This would be where they had grilled him time and again after his capture. He probably thought more was to come.

 

Ben turned to the guard, whose face appeared pasty and smug, and he commanded: “Open the door. Uncuff him.”

 

The guard did not hesitate as the expression fell away from his face and he obeyed Ben’s edict. Ben watched through the glass as Hux’s narrow wrists were released from the table, his face betraying confusion and gratitude at once.

 

The guard returned to the antechamber like an automaton, and stood awaiting Ben’s orders.

 

“You will exit that door, and you will not allow anyone to enter.”

 

Ben heard a chair scrape back sharply, and as the guard performed upon command, Ben glanced again at Hux. With the door between them open, no doubt the former general had heard Ben’s voice, and now he stood, visibly trembling, behind the steel table, green eyes sunken and wide and wild.

 

Ben was trembling as well as he shifted into the open space of the doorway, and the air between them was instantly charged with all the feelings that three years of being kept apart had given life and magnitude. The letter was pressed to Ben’s robes, and he needed to only take one step to place it on the table, his eyes brimming to see Hux as he was: hair unkempt and over long, narrow face covered in an untamed beard, nails long, and wiry frame emaciated. They were making him pay for his crimes with his dignity before they took his life.

 

“She never gave you the letters,” Hux read Ben’s mind. Or his face. Or the well-worn piece of paper between them.

 

Ben only shook his head, and rounded the table, and took the man he loved in his arms. He felt tiny, and forgotten, and he merely stood shrouded in Ben’s grasp for long minutes, shaking, before Hux finally managed to close his arms around the knight’s waist.

 

“Hello from the outside,” Ben whispered.

 

Hux clung to him, and Ben tangled a hand in his hair. He still smelled the same, like wind and space and strength.

 

“Are you here to say goodbye?” Hux’s voice finally came out, muffled against Ben’s robes, tremulous.

 

“No,” Ben said, and his mind flicked to all the preparations he’d made. The lightsaber hidden on his belt. The ship hidden in a cove several miles away. The goodbyes he’d said a hundred times to his past when reading Hux’s letters over the last few months.

  
Hux looked up at him, his eyes welling with hope, and Ben rejoiced to see that there was no doubt in them. It was the one thing Hux had always given him that his family could not, and it cemented his decision moreso than anything that had come before. He stroked the backs of his fingers over Hux’s cheek bone, so prominent now, and he showed him the planet he’d picked for them, in a galaxy far from this, where no one would ever find them. He showed him the sunsets they would watch together, and how the stars would turn in the sky as years passed.

“I’m here to take you home."

 


End file.
